lately, I've not been able to come to this forum very often. That was due mostly to a lot of work at the office, but also because I was setting up a Sudoku site of my own here in Austria.

It all started with a "Beginner's Tutorial" I wrote for a friend of mine, then I thought "wouldn't it be nice if one could go through all puzzles step by step and have something like a tutor available, who'd give hints and tips what to do next, just like in that tutorial."

I realized that the most exciting part of the whole project was to design a good user interface. Define "good". Good, for me, is when the user feels good. I tried to use as little verbal explanation as possible. Graphic elements, yes. Highlighted cells in the grid. Visual clues.

Feedback from friends and family was encouraging, but there was one thing missing: people kept asking for new puzzles.

So I started to grow my own puzzles. Collected them into categories, like "mild", "hard", "very hard" etc. And put them on the web. Four puzzles a day.

Take a look if you like, get your VH fix every day - the VH grade Monday-Wednesday is pretty much the same as here, on Thursday through Sunday, there is a VH+ category with skyscrapers, kites, and the odd w-wing, m-wing or unique rectangle thrown in.

printing: yes, the page is supposed to be printed. Clicking the grid (a printer icon should appear as soon as you hover over the grid), should take you directly to the print dialogue.

helper: as Danny said: the first-aid-kit takes you to the helper. just (left) click should do it. In the helper, it is possible to copy the lower right "log" area. I might add a direct link to dailysudoku's draw/play if there is sufficient demand...

yes, the calendar brings up the archived puzzles.

for each day, there are four puzzles, cycle through the puzzels using the left and right arrows.

the info icon in the upper left corner brings up some text and a link to this forum. Hope you guys don't mind

lower left: choose your language. It is supposed to select the appropriate language (German/English) automatically depending on your PC's settings, I hope you got English right away (I found no way to test that feature here)

I have a request. Can you move the printed puzzle about 3 cm up on the page? That way we can print two puzzles on one sheet of paper.

I usually print for puzzles per sheet: Top, bottom, front and back. Print, flip or rotate the sheet and feed it again.

I also print two per page, four per sheet, except I can make that four and eight with Vanhegan.

On Nataraj's you should be able to do it yourself by clicking Print preview and setting it to 70%. Just remember that the computer will remember that setting and use it the next time you print elsewhere. I have settings of 90, 90, 60 and 107 for BB, Menneske, Mepham and Vanhegan, respectively.

It may be presumptuous for me to think that others might not know this, but if you're not already using your printer's lowest quality setting for puzzles, try doing so. It prints faster and saves ink while still offering more than enough ink-on-paper contrast.

I had sort of the same problem with the layout of the printed page (well, basically "print" just calls the browser's print function and thus inherits the whole page layout - minus some other stuff like background images, pushbuttons and advertisements)

I like to fold the paper in half and do the puzzle on the upper half. That leaves the lower half for Nataraj Diagrams in the harder puzzles. So now I hope the new print layout will be convenient for all of us

I also included a button to call draw/play directly: no more need to copy the HSH log.